“In September 1990, as the first President Bush was making up his mind to dispatch a large force to the Persian Gulf to expel Iraqi troops from Kuwait, the powerful chairman of the Joint Chiefs was given a chance to make a case to his commander in chief that options short of all-out war had yet to be exhausted. The gist of Colin Powell’s argument was that a decision on war could wait, that economic sanctions, combined with a steady buildup of American forces in Saudi Arabia, might be enough to force Saddam Hussein to back down. That encounter in the Oval Office was set up and witnessed by Dick Cheney, the ever-taciturn defense secretary. ”